


I like you very much (just as you are)

by translorastyrell (nerddowell)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Consensual Underage Sex, Eating Disorders, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Triggers, Underage Drinking, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:01:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23059669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerddowell/pseuds/translorastyrell
Summary: You know, Sammy, I'm sure she's beautiful and talented and all that, but... the general wisdom is that, despite what the movies say, there isn't just one person in the world for each of us.(Love Actually, 2003)In which Renly has an obsession with Richard Curtis movies (Colin Firth), and Loras is exasperated.
Relationships: Renly Baratheon/Loras Tyrell
Comments: 5
Kudos: 32





	I like you very much (just as you are)

**Author's Note:**

> I was literally just reading _Bridget Jones's Baby_ yesterday and imagining Loras and Renly arguing over Colin Firth vs. Hugh Grant, and this ridiculousness was born. So, yeah. Have a story all about Renly Baratheon's not-so-secret obsession with Colin Firth.
> 
> Title from _Bridget Jones's Diary_.

Some people, it is said, are born with a thousand soul mates. Others have only one. Most are somewhere in the middle, with numbers ranging from ten to a hundred or more. Every soul has a thousand facets, after all, and how likely was it that you'd find one person to match each of yours perfectly, like a jigsaw piece that slotted together seamlessly next to all of your mismatched edges?

Not fucking likely, in Renly Baratheon's opinion.

Renly wasn't therefore surprised that, when he came of age, he had three soul marks. He'd always figured he'd be on the lower end of the scale. Five or less. And of all his friends, he had the lowest. (His oldest brother Robert had two. Stannis only had one, but Stannis was a) neither Renly's friend, nor even his favourite of his two brothers, and b) it was, frankly, a minor miracle in Renly's opinion that Stannis had a mark at all. The thought of his straight-laced, humourless brother having a perfect match out there in the world somewhere was a depressing one. One Stannis was more than enough.) By contrast, Renly's best friend Robb had thirty-one, sprinkled over his forearm like shining golden freckles. Even Jon, who was almost as dour and serious as his Uncle Ned sometimes, had nine. Renly had _three_.

There were two main schools of thought on the reason for having so few soul marks, and although Renly had been told by both of his brothers (one of the rare things Robert and Stannis actually agreed on) that soul mates and marks were a load of romantic bullshit, he'd still devoured every study and even every embarrassing chick-lit Mills & Boon novel on the subject. One: that a more complex soul had fewer marks. After all, it was more difficult to find a perfect match for all of the intricate idiosyncrasies of a deep person. Two: those with only a few marks had something wrong with them, something rotten somewhere deep and unfixable, and whatever universal power governed the assignment of soul mates was trying to protect others from them.

That was the theory Renly most bought into. After all, if someone somewhere matched Stannis then there had to be something wrong with them. Ditto Robert. The whole Baratheon family must be cursed.

And so Renly pretended not to be bothered by his few small soul marks, tiny golden stars that formed a delicate chain along the creases in his left palm. He got on with his life. He didn't need even one soul mate, let alone three. He was fine on his own.

* * *

**ONE**

The first time Renly felt a soul connection was when Robb kicked the door of the toilet cubicle in, wielding the fire extinguisher that had (unsuccessfully) been used to attempt to break the lock. Renly, who was in a state of shock and unable to do much more than stare at him, slowly removed the two fingers from his mouth where he'd been trying to bring up his lunch and instead slumped against the porcelain bowl of the toilet, the pungent school-loos smell of piss, BO and puke burning his nostrils.

Robb sat down beside him without a word and pulled Renly's head onto his shoulder, wrapping an arm around his back. His body was warm and solid against Renly's and it felt like home, comforting and warm like sinking into a hot bath, and it sent a flush of something singing through Renly's veins. He didn't feel so alone with Robb there.

'You need to stop doing that,' Robb said, his voice pained, and Renly - who had never been able to make promises even to himself to do so - immediately agreed.

'For me,' Robb said, and 'Yes,' Renly said. And he looked down to see a faint glow emanating from the mark closest to his knuckle, a trickle of light tracing the vein to the tip of his finger where Robb's right index finger was resting, warm and rough with lacrosse calluses, on top.

* * *

**TWO**

The second soul connection was everything and nothing like the first. Instead of a gentle enveloping warmth, it had the searing heat of setting his whole body on fire. It happened when he kissed the middle-aged George Clooney lookalike with the husky Spanish accent and the glinting gold tooth outside the bar, drunk on lust and the whiskey he was still technically legally too young to drink. The man's name was Oberyn, and he had so many soul marks that Renly lost count of them when walking his fingers over them later in bed.

Oberyn's hand was tracing idle patterns over Renly's back, still igniting faint sparks of arousal in his belly, when Renly broached the subject, and he smiled.

'I don't believe in 'one true love, one true soul mate'. Or even ten. I can find something to love in everyone, and so my heart is open to all.'

'Surely a soul mate is different, though?' Renly asked. 'Your heart falls in love. Your soul… isn't your soul meant to be the other half of theirs? Aren't you supposed to-' he dovetailed his fingers, not sure how to explain in words what he meant. Oberyn shrugged.

'Perhaps. But there are as many people out there as there are stars in the sky, and I so hate to be alone when I could be enjoying their company.' He smirked and pressed another leading, drawing kiss to Renly's lips, and Renly felt the swell of lust rising once more in his stomach.

He laughed, and rolled them over to enjoy Oberyn's company one last time before falling asleep, the small golden star by his wrist glowing gently.

* * *

**THREE**

The last time. _Oh_ , the last time. Renly's last soul connection was all-encompassing, so profound it moved him to tears. It was a wrench in his gut, a lurch in his heart, the sensation of stepping off a high place into freefall; the gentle warmth of friendship like with Robb mixed with the same sparking and fizzling of desire as with Oberyn. This time the connection was with a man Renly felt like he'd known his whole life, even though he'd only just moved to the area and was currently glaring at Renly while trying to wipe Renly's spilled coffee off his expensive laptop case.

'Sorry,' Renly stammered, for the fiftieth time, and the man rolled his eyes.

'Are you always this bloody clumsy?' He had a cut-glass accent, each syllable sharp and clean and crisp, so unlike Renly's Mancunian drawl.

'Um,' he mumbled, and the hazel eyes rolled again. Renly caught sight of a single faint line on the man's palm as he reached up to brush a curl out of his eyes, and he gasped.

'You're a one-marker? Really?'

The man narrowed his eyes and, in a tone perhaps more aggressive than the situation really warranted - although, Renly supposed with hindsight, it was kind of a personal question - he said, 'So what?'

Renly shut his mouth quickly, realising he'd been gaping like a stunned guppy, and shrugged.

'I just haven't ever met a one-marker before.' (A lie. He'd obviously met Stannis. But Stannis didn't really count as a person as much as a living, breathing aggravation to Renly.)

'Well, tickets to the one-man freak show are a tenner and judging by the fact that you paid for that small black filter coffee entirely in one- and two-pence pieces, I don't think you can afford it. So kindly piss off and stop gawping at me like I'm in a cage at the zoo. I bite, and I can't promise I don't have rabies.'

Renly laughed, a little uneasy, and the guy raised an eyebrow expectantly.

Renly pissed off and stopped gawping at him like the guy was in a cage at a zoo.

He didn't even register the fierce blazing of the star in the centre of his own palm, radiating light like the sun on a cloudless day.

* * *

It was a few weeks later, after another hookup with Oberyn that had left him with a sated feeling in his loins but had done nothing for the unfulfilled unease in his chest, that he saw the man again. As a matter of fact, it turned out that his name was Loras, he was a first-year at the same university as Renly, and that he hated the film Renly had so passionately (drunkenly) been defending to the other members of the university Labour Party Society.

' _Bridget Jones's Diary_ is a cinematic masterpiece, I can't believe you don't like it-'

'Not even Hugh Grant getting thrown through a Greek restaurant window by Colin Firth could rescue that film for me,' Loras scoffed. 'I bet you're the kind of person who watches _Love, Actually_ every Christmas and still cries.'

'You'd have to have a heart of stone not to! Liam Neeson reenacting Titanic with Thomas Brodie-Sangster! Emma Thompson finding the CD in Alan Rickman's coat pocket! _Colin Firth and that Portuguese waitress_!'

'Jesus, you have a fucking complex about Colin Firth.'

Renly gave a dreamy sigh. 'Colin Firth. Light of my life, fire of my loins.'

'Lana del Rey.'

' _Nabokov_ , you philistine. It's from _Lolita_.'

'Oh, well, that's alright then. It's from the highbrow literary paedophile, not the Grammy award-winning lyrical genius.'

'Did she win the Grammy for that album?'

'Who cares. My point is, you have a total hard-on for Colin Firth and that's just embarrassing. My _mother_ likes him. She goes all giggly when he comes out of the pond in _Pride and Prejudice_.'

Renly's eyes did not glaze over slightly at the thought. They _did not_. 'I don't blame her.'

Loras just rolled his eyes - he seemed to be constantly doing that whenever he was around Renly - and went to the bar to order another drink. Renly followed him; his beer bottle was almost empty anyway, and he couldn't allow that slight against the love of his life, the future Mr. Renly Baratheon Colin Firth, to stand uncontested.

'Who's _your_ celebrity crush then?'

'Channing Tatum, like a normal person from this century not living in a 2001 Richard Curtis rom-com. _Magic Mike_.'

Renly made a rude noise in his throat, and waved a fiver at the barmaid, half-shouting his order of another pint of Fat Tire IPA at her. She, also, rolled her eyes at him, but fetched it nevertheless. He told her to keep the change, figuring he owed her a tip for being such a drunken dickhead.

Loras snorted. 'I'm not accepting any judgement on my taste in men from you, Elizabeth Bennet.'

Renly stuck his tongue out at him and looked back towards his table, searching for his friends, but Robb, Jon and Sam all seemed to have melted away seamlessly into the crowd, leaving him alone with Loras. He turned back to the bar and squinted at the other man.

'So. One-marker, huh?'

'You're really going to try and have this conversation again?' Loras asked, glowering at him over a pint of Aspall's. 'Didn't you learn your lesson last time?'

'I just want to know,' Renly slurred, 'what that's like. Having only one person.'

'Well,' Loras said, 'when I meet them, I'll let you know.' And Renly, drunk as he was, missed the tiny shift of his weight on the bar stool, the way Loras' hazel eyes shifted to the mark on Renly's palm, sparkling under the low hazy lights of the bar.

* * *

When he woke up the next morning with a pounding headache and a mouthful of someone else's hair, Renly groaned out loud, spitting the irritating frizz out and struggling up to sit. He didn't recognise the room he was in, meaning he must have gone back to last night's conquest's place instead of his own. He glanced down at the pillow beside him and almost had a heart attack.

Loras.

He'd gone home with the one-marker. Renly had vague recollections of stumbling to a bar in town that stayed open later than the one on campus, one arm slung over Loras' shoulder (which was probably the only thing keeping him upright at that point). He even, he thought, remembered a drunken fumble in the loos of said bar, Loras' mouth hot and wet and hungry on his neck, but that was impossible. He'd never get off with anyone who spoke about Colin Firth with such disdain.

'Anyone' was currently stirring beside him, stretching until there was a muffled but audible pop of bones before sitting up and rubbing his eyes, hair adorably mussed.  
'Morning.'

'Did we…?'

'Yes. Multiple times, with great vigour.' Loras yawned. 'And you still wouldn't bloody shut up about Colin fucking Firth in between rounds. I nearly smothered you with the pillow.'

'Well, he is-'

"A beautiful, flawless, perfect human being and probably the last one of my soul mates',' said Loras, in a shocking Mancunian accent.

'Oi! I do _not_ sound like that!'

'You absolutely do,' Loras grinned. 'Go on, then, Mr. Three Soul Marks. Since you're so curious about my one, I feel like you owe me at least the stories behind your three.'

Renly almost protested that Loras hadn't told him about his one mark, but honestly, he couldn't remember if he had been told or not so it was probably only fair. 'Well, one is Robb-'

'Stark? Third year Engineering?'

'Yeah, we went to school together.'

'Fair,' Loras said with a nod of his head, 'he's fit.'

'Anyway,' Renly said archly, ignoring that interjection, 'one is Robb, and the other is a bloke called Oberyn I met in a bar when I was fifteen.'

'And you got at me for the _Lolita_ thing.' Loras scoffed. 'Classy.'

'Shut up.' Renly ran a hand through his hair, stifling a yawn of his own. 'Who's yours?'

'You,' said Loras, and Renly promptly fell out of bed.

* * *

It took thirty-five minutes and several large cups of coffee for Renly's head to stop spinning, during which time Loras regarded him with a distinctly pitying expression over a cup of Earl Grey. ' _Me_ ,' was all Renly could say, over and over, to himself, awed and terrified in equal measure. He couldn't be anyone's soul mate, let alone their sole soul mate - it was a disaster waiting to happen. He was cursed. Baratheon, remember?

Loras rolled his eyes. 'I'm not exactly thrilled about it either, by the way. Not least because I'm apparently up against He-Who-Need-Not-Be-Named for your affections.'

Renly blinked at him. 'But - me. _Me_!'

'Yes, _you_ , you brain-dead oaf!' Loras exploded. 'You! You who's so _fucking_ infuriating and obsessed with Colin bloody Firth and who won't stop turning up, everywhere, with your stupid smile and your stupid dimples and your stupid three fucking soul marks to remind me that I'm only a third as important to you as you are to me, if you even care at all-'

'I do,' said Renly, surprising even himself with how unexpectedly true it was. He'd known Loras all of three weeks, and yet it felt like his whole life. He hadn't forgotten that dizzying, nauseous sucker-punch of feeling the first time they'd met. Hadn't forgotten the way Loras' kisses last night had made his heart sore and his head spin even worse than the shots of tequila. Hadn't forgotten the way that, when that smile - sweetly dimpled and flashing one crooked tooth - had slowly spread across his lips, Renly could swear the whole night sky had dimmed and tunnelled to that view of Loras' face, suddenly the centre of his whole universe. 'I do care.'

'You don't have to placate me,' Loras snapped. 'I know you don't. What a fucking cosmic joke. Loras Tyrell, fewer soul mates than he has eyes, and the one he has got doesn't give a shit beyond a one-night stand-'

'Are you going to let me answer these frankly quite presumptuous rants or not?' Renly interrupted, sipping his fourth coffee.

'...What?'

'Your rant. About how I obviously don't care about you. Are you going to let me tell you what a blind fucking idiot you are, or not?'

'Well, I-'

'Am totally blind, clearly. Admittedly I realised after I spilled the coffee on your laptop bag that you were my third soul mate but didn't do anything until last night, so it's at least a bit my fault, but still. I mean, I care, Loras. I feel like - with you, it feels like - like if you're not there-'

'The sun has gone down. And no candle can replace it.'

'Yeah.' Renly gazed at him across the breakfast bar, his face earnest. Loras' cheeks were pink, hiding his face behind a curtain of lazy brown curls, but there was a sparkle in what little Renly could see of his eyes and it was making his heart swell, filling it up like a balloon with hot air until it was so buoyant and full he felt like he would burst. 'Exactly like that.'

'Jesus,' Loras mumbled, smiling widely. 'You really do live in a fucking Richard Curtis movie.'

'Piss off,' Renly grinned, and kissed him.

**Author's Note:**

> I did warn you it was ridiculous. Evidently having a 3 month old has fried my brain.


End file.
